MSHerald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on roll-off (RORO) ferry which capsized moments after leaving the Belgianport of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew.[1]

The modern 8-deck car and passenger ferry, owned by Townsend Thoresen, had been designed for rapid loading and unloading on the competitive cross-channel route, and there were no watertight compartments. When the ship left harbour with her bow-door open, the sea immediately flooded the decks, and within minutes she was lying on her side in shallow water.

The immediate cause of the sinking was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow-door. But the official inquiry placed more blame on his supervisors and a general culture of poor communication in Townsend Thoresen.

Although the vessel was salvaged and put up for sale, there were no takers, and she ended her days in a scrapyard in Taiwan.

Since the disaster, improvements have been made to the design of RORO vessels, with watertight ramps, indicators showing the position of the bow-doors, and the banning of undivided decks.

This incident caused the highest death-count of any peacetime maritime disaster involving a British ship since the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland in 1914.

The Dover–Calais crossing of the Channel is the shortest route between England and France, and in 1987 (prior to the opening of the Channel Tunnel) it was the quickest route. To remain competitive with other ferry operators on the route, Townsend Thoresen required ships which were designed to permit fast loading and unloading and quick acceleration. The ships comprised eight decks numbered A to H from top to bottom which contained the following:

Loading of vehicles onto G deck was through watertight doors at the bow and stern. Both sets of doors were hinged about a vertical axis, meaning the status of the bow doors could not be seen from the wheel house. Loading of vehicles onto E deck and F deck was through a weathertight door at the bow and an open portal at the stern. Vehicles could be loaded and unloaded onto E and G deck simultaneously using double-deck linkspans in use at Dover and Calais.

On the day the ferry capsized, the Herald of Free Enterprise was working the route between Dover and the Belgianport of Zeebrugge. This was not its normal route and the linkspan at Zeebrugge had not been designed specifically for the Spirit class vessels: it used a single deck, preventing the simultaneous loading of both E and G decks, and the ramp could not be raised high enough to reach E deck.[2][3] To compensate for this, the vessel's bow ballast tanks were filled.[2] However, the ship's natural trim was not restored after loading.[2] Had the Herald survived, she would have been modified to obviate this procedure.[3]

Before dropping moorings, it was normal practice for the assistant boatswain to close the doors. However, the assistant boatswain, Mark Stanley, had returned to his cabin for a short break after cleaning the car deck upon arrival, and was still asleep when the harbour-stations call sounded and the ship dropped her moorings.[4] The first officer, Leslie Sabel, was required to stay on deck to make sure the doors were closed.[5] Sabel said he thought he saw Stanley approaching. He was seriously injured in the disaster and the court concluded that his evidence was inaccurate.[5] It is believed that under pressure to get to his harbour station on the bridge, he had left G deck with the bow doors open in the expectation that Stanley would arrive shortly.[5] The court also described the attitude of boatswain Terence Ayling, believed to have been the last person on G deck, as most unfortunate.[5] Asked why he did not close the doors given there was no one else there to do it, he said it was not his duty.[5] However the court praised his work in the rescue.[5]

Captain David Lewry assumed that the doors had been closed since he could not see them from the wheelhouse owing to the ship's design, and had no indicator lights in the wheelhouse.[6]

The ship left its berth in Zeebrugge inner harbour at 18:05 (GMT) with a crew of 80 and carrying 459 passengers, 81 cars, 3 buses and 47 trucks. She passed the outer mole at 18:24 and capsized about four minutes later.[7]

When the ferry reached 18.9 knots (35.0 km/h; 21.7 mph) 90 seconds after leaving the harbour, water began to enter the car deck in large quantities. The resulting free surface effect destroyed her stability.

In a matter of seconds, the ship began to list 30 degrees to port. The ship briefly righted herself before listing to port once more, this time capsizing. The entire event took place within 90 seconds.[8] The water quickly reached the ship's electrical systems, destroying both main and emergency power and leaving the ship in darkness.

The ship ended on its side half-submerged in shallow water 1 kilometre (0.5 nmi; 0.6 mi) from the shore. Only a fortuitous turn to starboard in her last moments, and then capsizing on a sandbar, prevented the ship from sinking entirely in much deeper water.

Crew aboard a nearby dredger noticed the Herald‍ '​s lights disappear, and notified the port authorities. The alarm was raised at 18:26 British time (or 19:26 Belgian time). A rescue helicopter arrived within half an hour, shortly followed by assistance from the Belgian Navy, who were undertaking an exercise within the area.[citation needed] Wolfgang Schröder, a German Captain, was commended by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and received a medal from King Baudouin of Belgium for his heroic efforts in rescuing passengers.[9]

The disaster resulted in the deaths of 193 people. Many of those on board had taken advantage of a promotion in The Sun newspaper offering cheap trips to the continent. Most of the victims were trapped inside the ship and succumbed to hypothermia because of the frigid (3 °C) water. The rescue efforts of the Belgian Navy limited the death toll. Recoverable bodies were removed in the days following the accident. During the rescue the tide started to rise and the rescue team was forced to stop all efforts until morning. The last of the people left on board died of hypothermia.

A public Court of Inquiry into the incident was held under British Lord Justice Sir Barry Sheen in 1987.[10] It found the sinking was caused by three main factors—Stanley's failure to close the bow doors, Sabel's failure to make sure the bow doors were closed, and Lewry leaving port without knowing the bow doors were not closed. While the court determined the immediate cause of the sinking was Stanley's failure to close the bow doors, it was very critical of Sabel for not being in a position to prevent the disaster, calling his actions "the most immediate" cause of the sinking.[5]

The fact that Stanley was asleep at the time of departure led Sheen to examine the working practices of Townsend Thoresen, from which he concluded that the poor workplace communication and stand-off relationship between ship operators and shore-based managers was the root cause of the sinking,[4] and identified a "disease of sloppiness" and negligence at every level of the corporation's hierarchy.[11] Issues relating to the breaking of waves high on the bow doors while under way and requests to have an indicator installed on the bridge showing the position of the doors were dismissed; the former because of the attitude that ships' masters would come and "bang on the desk" if an issue was truly important, and the latter because it was thought frivolous to spend money on equipment to indicate if employees had failed to do their job correctly.[6]

The design of the Herald was also found to be a contributing cause of the sinking.[4] Unlike other ships, which are subdivided into watertight compartments, the vehicle decks of RORO vessels are normally contiguous: any flooding on these decks would allow the water to flow the length of the ship.[2] This issue had been identified as early as 1980, following the losses of Seaspeed Dora and Hero in June and November 1977 respectively.[12] The need to adjust the ship's bow trim to use the port facilities at Zeebrugge and failure to readjust before departure was another factor in the sinking.[8]

In October 1983, the Herald‍ '​s sister ship Pride of Free Enterprise had sailed from Dover to Zeebrugge with the bow doors open, after its assistant boatswain fell asleep.[5] It was therefore believed that leaving the bow doors open alone should not have caused the ship to capsize. However, tests by the Danish Maritime Institute after the accident found that once water began to enter the vehicle deck of a RORO, the vessel would likely capsize within 30 minutes, while other tests showed that the lack of watertight subdivision common on other vessels allowed the weight of water to flow freely and increase the likelihood of capsizing.[8]

Another factor that contributed to the capsizing was the depth of the water. When a vessel is under way, the movement under it creates low pressure, which has the effect of increasing the vessel's draught. This is known as the "squat effect". In deep water the effect is small but in shallow water it is greater, because as the water passes underneath it moves faster and causes the draught to increase. This reduced the clearance between the bow doors and water line to 1.5 metres. Although the bow doors were open and 1.5 metres above the water, it was still not enough to cause the ship to capsize, so the investigators looked at the height and volume of water produced by the bow wave. After extensive tests, the investigators found that when the ship travelled at a speed of 18 knots (33 km/h), the wave was enough to engulf the bow doors. This caused a "step change": if the ship had been sailing at less than 18 knots and not in shallow water, people on the car deck would probably have had time to notice the bow doors were open and close them.

In October 1987, a coroner's inquest jury into the capsizing returned verdicts of unlawful killing. Seven people involved at the company were charged with gross negligence manslaughter, and the operating company, P&O European Ferries (Dover) Ltd, was charged with corporate manslaughter, but the case collapsed after Justice Turner directed the jury to acquit the company and the five most senior individual defendants.[13] It did, however, set a precedent that corporate manslaughter is legally admissible in English courts. The disaster was one of a number that influenced thinking leading to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.[14]

MS Herald of Free Enterprise towed into the harbour at Vlissingen after salvage, May 1987

A salvage operation, conducted by Dutch company Smit-Tak Towage and Salvage (part of Smit International), was embarked upon almost immediately to refloat the ship. The operation was successfully concluded in late April 1987, allowing the remaining bodies trapped underwater to be removed. The ship was towed to Zeebrugge, and then across the Western Scheldt to the yard of De Schelde in Flushing, where her fate was decided. It had originally been assumed that she could be repaired and continue sailing. However, no buyer was found; she was sold to Compania Naviera SA of Kingstown, Saint Vincent for scrapping. She was renamed Flushing Range and the Townsend Thoresen branding painted over before her final sailing to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, for scrapping.[15] She began her final voyage on 5 October 1987, together with the MV Gaelic, towed by the Dutch tug Markusturm.[16] The voyage was interrupted for four days when the ships encountered the Great Storm of 1987 off Cape Finisterre, where The Herald of Free Enterprise was cast adrift after its tow rope parted,[17] resuming on 19 October 1987. The hulk began to disintegrate while off the coast of South Africa on 27 December 1987, and had to be towed into Port Elizabeth on 2 January 1988 to undergo temporary repairs to allow her to continue her voyage. She finally arrived in Taiwan on 22 March 1988.[18]

Owing to the incident, the Townsend Thoresen name had inevitably been broadcast on television and in newspapers around the world. P&O quickly decided to rebrand the company as P&O European Ferries, repaint their fleet's red hulls in navy blue and remove the TT logo from the funnels.

Since the accident several improvements to the design of this type of vessel have been made. These include indicators that display the state of the bow doors on the bridge, watertight ramps being fitted to the bow sections of the front of the ship, and "freeing flaps" to allow water to escape from a vehicle deck in the event of flooding. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea regulations were changed in 1990 to require 125 centimetres (49 in) of freeboard (in the case of RORO vessels, defined as the height between the vehicle deck and the water line) for all new ROROs, instead of the previous 76 centimetres (30 in).[8] Some vessels omit the bow door configuration altogether and vehicles enter and exit from rear doors only. New International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations are in place that prohibit an open (undivided) deck of this length on a passenger RORO vessel.

The divers and rescuers who entered the capsized vessel to retrieve corpses received psychosocial support designed and delivered by Belgian Army psychologist Luc Quintyn. This was the first step to the establishment of a Crisis Psychology Unit within the Belgian Army Hospital.

Only one of Herald's two sister ships is still operational; the former Spirit of Free Enterprise was extended to increase her cargo capacity during her time under the P&O flag in a stretch and total rebuild operation and scrapped in 2012. The Pride of Free Enterprise is still more or less as built.[19]

Nicholas Ridley, a government minister at the time, was criticised for alluding to the accident (while speaking on another subject) on 10 March 1987. He was quoted as saying that "although he is the pilot of the [parliamentary] Bill, he has not got his bow doors open". He apologised for the remark.[20]

In 2007 Belgian singer Jonathan Vandenbroeck, more commonly known as Milow, released a song to mark the 20th anniversary of the tragedy. Titled "Herald of Free Enterprise" the song echoes the tragic events of the evening and was featured on his 2009 album Milow.

Subsequently Maurice de Rohan, an Australian businessman who lost his daughter and son-in-law in the tragedy, founded the charityDisaster Action to respond to and assist others who might find themselves involved in similar occurrences.[21]

^http://www.mastermariner.org/sidelights/winter06.pdf Quote: „Captain Schröder was a hero of the MV Herald of Free Enterprise Disaster some years back, when he and his ship saved a large number of the passengers. For his heroic actions, he received a letter of commendation from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Margaret Thatcher) and a medal from the King of Belgium.“